Alert: Crunchberries Are Not Real Berries

By cwaltersJune 4, 2009

Late last month, a U.S. District Court judge dismissed a complaint filed by a woman who said she’d been buying Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries cereal for four years under the assumption that crunchberries are a real berry. “The plaintiff, Janine Sugawara, alleged that she had only recently learned to her dismay that said ‘berries’ were in fact simply brightly-colored cereal balls.”

In his decision, the judge wrote,

This Court is not aware of, nor has Plaintiff alleged the existence of, any actual fruit referred to as a “crunchberry.” Furthermore, the “Crunchberries” depicted on the [box] are round, crunchy, brightly-colored cereal balls, and the [box] clearly states both that the Product contains “sweetened corn & oat cereal” and that the cereal is “enlarged to show texture.” Thus, a reasonable consumer would not be deceived into believing that the Product in the instant case contained a fruit that does not exist. . . . So far as this Court has been made aware, there is no such fruit growing in the wild or occurring naturally in any part of the world.

According to Lowering the Bar, the blog that reported this decision, this isn’t even the first time someone has done this:

Judge England also noted another federal court had “previously rejected substantially similar claims directed against the packaging of Fruit Loops [sic] cereal, and brought by these same Plaintiff attorneys.” He found that their attack on “Crunchberries” should fare no better than their prior claims that “Froot Loops” did not contain real froot.

@pecan 3.14159265: Considering that some people never go into the produce section and have a hard time figuring out what an artichoke is I am starting to believe this women honestly thought there were teal berries out there….”What do you mean you dont got teal ? Capn has em!”

@youbastid: Actually they don’t. I watched an episode of Food Detectives on Food Network and everything except the blue on blue crabs were a veriation of purple, including blue berries, blue corn, and blue potatoes. They didn’t test blue lobster though.

I ate this same cereal, with crunchberries, when I was 10 years old. No one had to tell me that the berries were not real. I’m wondering what lawyer decided to take her case and thought it could hold up in court.

Here’s a preview of the court case, quoted from the British sitcom, “The Vicar of Dibley”:

Alice: You know that stuff they’re selling now at the local shop?
Geraldine:Which stuff?
Alice: “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter”.
Geraldine:Oh yes
Alice: Well, I can’t believe it’s not butter.
Geraldine: Yeah, well I believe that is the idea, yeah.
Alice: Then yesterday, I went to Crookenden and I bought this other stuff, like a sort of home-brand, you know?
Geraldine: Yes…
Alice: And you know, I can’t believe it’s not “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter”.
Geraldine: Mmm. I’m losing you now.
Alice: Well, you know “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter”?
Geraldine: Yeah, you think it is butter.
Alice: No no, I mean you know the stuff that I can’t believe is not butter is called “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter”.
Geraldine: Probably, yeah, yeah.
Alice: Well I can’t believe the stuff that is not “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” is not “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter”, and I can’t believe that both “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” and the stuff that I can’t believe is not “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” are both, in fact, not butter. And I believe they both might be butter, in a cunning disguise. And in fact there’s a lot more butter around than we all thought there was.
Geraldine: Yeah. You see, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

@halah: sorry, i had to go look that up before i knew what you meant. but wow. i mean, i didn’t even click the product page – the one line description on google pretty much covered everything i ever need to know about sneaker balls.

i put all my faith in the intelligence of humanity in the single sentence: “what time is the 3 o’clock parade?” [which is to say – not much, en masse]

I can accept that there are some ignorant people out there, but the bigger insult is that there are lawyers willing to take on a case like this, more than once even. What does it matter if the crunchberries are not real, where is the injury?

What about the fact that Basic 4 cereal touts on their packaging (presumably) four basic elements to a balanced cereal, but actually only contains three notable ingredients, since “delicious” is not edible.

The text on the box says: A Delicious Blend of Sweet and Tangy Fruits, Crunchy Nuts and a Wholesome Variety of Grains

@Powerlurker: Right, but I pay the judge and the clerk and the baliff and the court recorder. And my wife is about to have to take manditory furloughs from her job at a state college, while these jackasses piss away public money arguing that some dumb ho couldn’t figure out in 4 years what every child figures out in 5 seconds.

@Powerlurker: I would agree – but rarely do lawsuits of this nature work on an hourly or flat rate fee basis. I’m an attorney that handles a lot of civil litigation (for plaintiffs mainly) and I wouldn’t imagine touching this with a ten foot pole. It’s truly a waste of the court’s time.

@Kaellorian: I with you. Lawyers already have a bad name. This just makes it worse. I wish sanctions were used more frequently for situations like this. Judges don’t issue sanctions nearly enough. Hell, even if they get overturned on appeal, that lawyer still has to fight it. Perhaps it will teach him/her to think twice about filing frivolous suits.

@ARP: Sanctions piss lawyers off and judges count on the support of the lawyers in their practice area. I agree with you, though, that for the sake of transparency (ha!) and judicial economy, sanctions should be issues in more circumstances.

@Kaellorian: The case was discussed at length on a legal list serve to which our office subscribes. Almost without exception, the attorneys who responded had nothing good to say about a lawyer who would file such a suit in the first place. It embarrasses all of us who work in the legal profession.

Personally, I wonder about the intelligence of any parent who would feed that sort of crap to their children. There are plenty of cereals and other breakfast foods readily available that are actually good for kids, and they’re no more expensive than sugar cereals. Otherwise, you might as well just feed them a bowl full of milk duds steeped in pancake syrup.

@labeled: this is soooo possible. I am going to dedicate my life to miniature cow breeding. Then once this breed is established, I will work them down to “Toy” size and finally I get “Teacup” cattle, small enough to fit in your front pocket. I’m sure my gecko would love some live steak, crickets can get pretty bland, or so I’ve heard.

Oh no. I am starting to suspect that Honeycomb cereal isn’t made up of actual honeycombs. And that Frankenberries might not be berries! And all this time I avoided Fruity Pebbles becauise I had a feeling that, even if they were fruity, it might not be good for my teeth to eat pebbles.

I’ll just eat Cookie Crisp from now on, since at least they are more honest about their ingredients.

OK, let’s see…..a woman goes to a lawyer, explains her case, lawyer actually decides to take said case, court actually decides to hear said case — as my mom would say…the whole country is just going to hell in a handbasket (I don’t pretend to know what a handbasket actually is).

This is like that thing in England where they had to say on a chocolate bar that it had milk in it, despite the fact that the words MILK CHOCOLATE BAR were printed in all caps in plain English on the front with a picture of two glasses of milk being poured into a chocolate bar.

I have decided to pursue legal action as well.
The name of the cereal is Cap’N Crunch, and I have found there to be neither any chunks of sea captains, and just in case I misunderstood “Cap’N”, I looked for pieces of Caps and any sort of headwear. Nothing. I expect a large settlement.

As I said in my post about the orange juice 911 call, stupidity is epidemic. This isn’t funny in the least. It is very, very sad. An educated attorney took this into a court of law at the request of a very confused individual. Does this not seem pathetically stupid to anyone else?